My 12 Step Journal: 11/27/11

11-27-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p. 134 Step 10 continued

The thoughts of yesterday’s study kept coming back to me throughout the day. It helped me realize how I demand perfection of my children when I don’t allow them to make mistakes, and how it keeps them from learning. Yesterday I reprimanded my oldest in a way I have never done before, I think for the better. Maybe it was my hormone imbalance, maybe it was my recent studies of Gandhi, and maybe it was my growing abhorrence of sin… Yesterday morning (during scripture study no less) my 3 year old was trying to pull the string for the curtains to open the blinds. My oldest decided she didn’t want her to do that and took it upon herself (despite my encouragement to leave her alone) to enforce her will on her sister. It didn’t go in her favor, so my oldest who is 7 bit my three year old daughter on the hip. It wasn’t terribly hard and I do believe she did use self-restraint, but the whole matter outraged me and my anger ran hot. I spanked the perpetrator and tried to console the hurt one. Allie sat in time out for a while until she told me she was ready to apologize and be nice. That’s when it all came out of me. I cried and pleaded with her; I told her how much it hurt me to see her hurt her sister. I told her of actions and consequences and how our actions affect others; and how Heavenly Father feels about it. I suppose because of my tears, she started crying too. Her tears looked more like drama, but they were real tears. It felt like that time stood still as we shared those few tender moments.

“He did deliver me from bondage” p. 134

I love the transitioning effect of her words that lift me:

“And yet everywhere we look, the creation of God mirrors the eternal truth of life’s transcendent, pulsating rhythm – ever wavering and yet ever progressing.”

She also uses the example of the body, another natural system! I love seeing truth lessons in nature. It truly liberates me!

This is distilled wisdom:

“In the ten years in which I have been consciously trying to apply these principles, I have observed that all other wrongdoing or sin I get into begins when I forget that I of myself am nothing. The minute I start insisting that my will be done, I lose my peace and serenity.”

I look forward to the day I can say of myself “after ten years of consciously trying to apply these principles…” This is also a great starting place to look next time I feel I have lost it.

“He is always “with” us, in the sense that He is always aware of us and awaits our genuine, heart-deep turning to Him.”

“Will-power = OUR will + HIS power.”

WOW! I love this idea about motivation and how repentance becomes possible through grace and mercy. ! Wow ! I never thought of it that way before; that is truly incredible.

11-26-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p.129-

Step 10:

“The mighty change of heart does not bring me to a state of perfection but rather to a state of continual repentance and abhorrence of sin.”

p. 130 I like this sentence:

“The mighty change of heart does not bring us to a state of perfection, but rather convinces us of our own powerlessness to be perfect, and turns us to know and trust Him who is perfect enough for us all. The word repentance means literally to “turn again”.

I think I have been trying all my life- trying so hard to try to ‘be perfect’ because I thought that we have to earn our way or that we have to prove ourselves in self-mastery, or that we have to look that way to the other people at church… I’m not sure exactly what it is. I think sometimes at church I got the feeling that everyone was trying to appear to be perfect and I thought I had to do it too. Maybe it’s a paradigm of the” game of the inner ring” (CS Lewis) that is perpetuated subconsciously, like the ‘rage of the mob’ that takes over causing people to do things they wouldn’t normally do… Hum. I guess that’s a result of environment. Anyway, this sentence is so liberating. I am so thankful I don’t have to try to appear to be perfect anymore, because the gospel is one of repentance and not one of perfection.

11-25-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p. 128 Day 7

http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/26?lang=eng Mosiah 26:30

30 Yea, and ^aas often as my people ^brepent will I forgive them their trespasses against me.

That is a very merciful promise. It doesn’t say ‘I’ll forgive them if they never do it again’. It does not appear to be a conditional promise. Regardless of previous or even future circumstances, the promise is that as often as we repent we will be forgiven. That makes God pretty approachable, wouldn’t you say?

How has my perception of the degree of His love changed? I think the greatest change in this has been at the realization of what God, my Heavenly Father, wants for me. Some people imagine up unto themselves a God who is cold and apathetic toward us. I used to feel on an unconscious level this kind of numb relationship regarding how God felt about me.

I truly think I gained my original perceptions about God through the eyes of my childhood. I have seen in my life that as parents the way we are to our children is the later perception they gain of God. I know it is a very heavy weight, but I have seen it through experience that has taught me this reality in my life. So when I learned that God actually is not figuratively sitting in the Lazy Boy reading the news paper, but is actually sitting on the sidelines on the edge of His seat, my perception of Him changed. Now I understand what God wants for me in an active anxious way to succeed and He has already paved the pathway for that to be possible.

11-24-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p. 127, Day 6

I remember once I read that, the lady Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher once said as she took office that she recognized in order to get to a less socialized state in her government and come to a place of peace that she knew she would first have to go through periods of conflict. This thought was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read Colleen’s thoughts here. I had never connected the idea of progress with it before. That is a very empowering feeling. I feel that it is true, that progress does not happen in a perfectly straight line. There is also a book just out that, as far as I can gather, talks about this principle. It’s called the Zigzag principle. Leslie Householder is promoting it. A friend of mine also described this principle once when she said that our path to our mission is like a zigzag. Others looking at us judgmentally may see that we are all over the place and don’t know what we’re really doing, but we know as we follow God the Zigzag gets smaller and smaller, eventually leading us to our desired end. I do see that it is obvious, and attained through a process of persistence and work.

The periods of war and peace in my life that come evidently to mind are within my marriage, and they interestingly enough seem at first thought to correspond to periods of war and peace within myself as evidence of my own feeling of closeness to God. 8 and a half years ago when Josh and I got married we both brought to the marriage the baggage of previous marriages. I think prejudice and pride would be the best way to describe our baggage. I was horribly defiant and he was terribly tyrannical. We would fight and pull against the other until war broke out. I remember once he left me after a fight (at the temple no less) four months after we were just married. We have been through all sorts of desolation: broken doors, computers, phones. It has been an incredible blessing that no one has ever raised a fist in anger to another person. Mom reminded me yesterday of a catsup bottle that once went flying across the kitchen in the most perfect flat centrifugal action. It was like watching a slow motion scene in The Matrix. The funny thing that I can see now is that I was at war with the wrong party. I was at war with him because I didn’t know myself, and because I hadn’t come to truly know my God. The progress this book has brought me in that process is completely priceless and amazing. I am studying Gandhi right now, and he describes it as the process of self-actualization as a means to purify yourself to grow closer to God. I love Gandhi. There are some things he believed that I do not agree with, but some things that I find perfectly synonymous as he describes himself that I feel are also from the depths of my own soul. He never thought so of himself, but I believe it is because of his humility that made him a Great Soul.

11-23-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p.127 Day 5

Jarom 1:12

Ashamed for being stirred up to anger- Yes; Repentance, no. It has been a little painful and sometimes I have wondered at the value of drudging up the past, but in hind-sight I can see that as these things get resolved then the past truly gets resolved and then there is nothing left to drudge up. By what means? We are admonished to watch and pray continually. Every day I pray and acknowledge our weakness before God, repenting and asking for strength. Just by desiring to improve, then I repent and get better. Repentance is not about condemnation, it is about improvement, so we can continually grow closer to the Savoir and feel more and more of His light and His love. We also get to take of the Sacrament every week to renew our baptismal covenants. This helps us deeply ponder on ways that we can change (repent) so that we can become more like the Savoir.

Personal application: I was actually talking to my Mom yesterday about the ways my kids have been trying to stir up my anger- to ‘get my goat’. She says they intentionally do things just to get a flare because they get a kick out of it. I said that that’s evil, and she said that’s true. It’s like there’s a ‘monster’ under the covers and they taunt and tease to get her to come out, but she doesn’t want to come out. They will continue to taunt and tease until I eliminate the monster within me. I am getting better and gaining control within. Weather or not it will ever happen again is not the point; but the fact that I am improving is all the Lord expects of me.